A Blog About Making Culture
This is what you should read on the web
November 15, 2006
- So maybe Gracenote (formerly CDDB) isn't evil after all? I love anything that challenges the conventional wisdom, especially when someone's gotten a bad rap. Good reporting, Eliot Van Buskirk! I'd been accepting the received wisdom about this company for years, apparently unfairly. Do we have a tech equivalent term for "urban legend"?
- There's pubic hair dye now. So you've got that going for you. One color is called "Brown Betty", which I thought was a type of baked good.
- Microsoft and Yahoo endorse Google's sitemaps format for describing your website. I love when there's this kind of informal collaboration, as in the underrated nofollow initiative, as well as my long-time favorite robots.txt.
- That Sitemaps.org site should probably have a sitemap at some point.
- S.R. Sidarth in the Washington Post: "I am macaca".
Allen's actions that day stood out because they were not representative of how I was treated while traveling around the state. Everywhere I went, though I was identifiably working on behalf of Allen's opponent, people treated me with dignity, respect and kindness. I cannot recall one event where food was served and I was not invited to join in the meal. In southwest Virginia, hospitality toward me was at a high point.
I don't mean to belabor the macaca point, and the story is much more nuanced than it seems, but I hope all the slobbering politicians, regardless of political persuasion, take away a simple lesson from this: If you fuck with Indians in America, you will lose control of both houses of Congress.
- George H.W. Bush thinks one of the causes of political incivility is bloggers. He's right.
- I'm going to be on Cranky Geeks again. Seems to me the show's gotten a lot better since their blog switched to Movable Type. And I get to talk about the Wii and Vox, two of my favorite toys! Hooray.
- In case you missed it, you should watch the "I got a brown Zune" movie at the end of my last post. It's the finest film you'll see all year, or your money back. You'll also find yourself saying to yourself, "I got a brown Zune!" over and over.
- I really liked the Jay-Z ad for HP until I'd read the Slate piece about the campaign:
Though they were just as expensive to create as the TV ads, HP opted not to buy television time for these spots. According to Roman, this was the plan from the outset. HP decided that Web ads have become radically more effective of late, and thus that it's worth it to spend money on high production values.
I feel so manipulated! Eh, fuck it. I like the ads anyway. Three dimensional stadium rendering!
Previously: The Problem Is, The Zune Is Brown
Abhi
I love when there’s this kind of informal collaboration
Umm ..
Google Toolbar shows a pagerank of 10 for Gmail. And 0 for Mail.yahoo.com
Tells you what Google truly thinks of Yahoo :)
I am sure the pagerank algorithm isn’t responsible for this. This is a delightful human error.
Harold Check 
That Slate piece is definitely a backhanded B+ for the HP campaign, which I also quite liked when I (70+ hours online per week + TiVo) saw them on — wait for it — TV. I’ve never seen one online, until that article. What will the marketing geniuses fuck up next? And the kicker is: Those laptops are really great. I have a very “grass is always greener” attitude to my tech and I’m already planning on my next HP laptop. Sad. Don’t they know that the only kind of commercial any of us will be watching online in the the coming year is “I got a brown Zune” and the follow-up spots “Mine’s brown” and “Mine too” and “Wheredyagetabrownone?”
jkottke
I’m not sure the Gracenote interview challenges any conventional wisdom. At the beginning of the interview, the alleged problem is stated: “Among other things, detractors claim the company built a profitable business on the backs of unpaid volunteers, and now sells the data those volunteers contribute back to them in various forms.” Scherf says nothing to dispute that. They still take submissions from volunteers, those volunteers are unpaid, their submissions are not available except through one of Gracenote’s services. If you think that Gracenote is unfairly profiting from that data (like some people think that Digg profiting from their users’ submissions is unfair), there’s not alot there to make you change your mind.
mathew
HP didn’t buy any television slots for their commercials? that’s the only place i’ve even seen them…
Bob Sherron
Yeah, I’m not sure where Slate got the idea that the HP ads weren’t on TV. They play here in St. Louis all the time. I see them mostly during sporting events, especially the World Series. Of course, that’s probably just the only type of programming I don’t watch on the DVR.
Anil Dash
We’re suffering for my poor choice of pullquote here — the sentence preceding my excerpt was important:
Interestingly, some of the ads (including Cuban’s) are only viewable on the Web.
So some weren’t on TV. And Jason, the conventional wisdom about CDDB, judging from what I’ve read online, is that there was no way to get that data out of Gracenote without paying. But you can download it, and that goes a long way. Also, the guy at Gracenote didn’t seem totally clueless, which was my prior impression of the company.
dave
You might want to check out the comments that have now appeared on the Gracenote interview. They don’t come out looking very good.
I can’t speak for ‘common knowledge’ but as someone who has been trying to get Music metadata off the web since I had a Sony 400 CD changer and got quickly bored of typing, the immediate bad press I thought of was bogus patents, and forcing licencees to bar the use of (potential) alternatives and competitors.
Oh, and generally being stagnant and providing, to this day, very poor quality data, that too.
Jay Fienberg
“the underrated nofollow initiative”
The initiative is underrated because the technology is overrated.
katie spence
I enjoyed your summary of the macaca effect.
George
I, for one, welcome our new desi overlords.
George
Oh, and …
“I think the American people got really tired and fatigued with the arrogance and style of this administration. Someone told me early in my career: ‘If you want to get elected, learn to speak. If you want to stay elected, learn to listen.’”
Matt Bai’s “The Last 20th-Century Election”
Amanda Kelso
Working for the ad agency that created the HP spots (Goodby, Silverstein & Partners), I can confirm that 3 of the spots were “launched” on TV and then were also distributed on the web (including the Jay-Z, Pharrell and Shaun White spots). Two spots were launched specifically as web films (Mark Cuban and Mark Burnett).
And yes, that stadium rendering is pretty cool…
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